Why do all the joggers jog anti-clockwise around Russell Square? I always walk clockwise which means when I go for an amble under the (dying) trees, I get loads of sweaty people bearing down on me. For some reason it feels "right" to walk clockwise - anti-clockwise is like going the wrong way. Or perhaps it's just me - always walking against the flow, always the one that has to be unintentionally different, never in accord with my fellow man.
Despite the ghastly heat of summer, it feels faintly autumnal on Russell Square, but that's only because there are so many dead leaves on the ground. It doesn't rain in London, whatever the tourists might tell you. Occasionally we get a bit of armpit sweat drizzling sickly out the sky and there's quite a lot of sticky grey cloud hanging about but mostly it's dry dry dry. The one day it rained this summer - that'll be the day that everyone remembers, convinced it rained every day. It doesn't. I live here. I know. There's a tiny new cherry blossom tree that flowered beautifully in the spring that is sadly dead, still hanging onto its dried up leaves as if for comfort. I told one of the gardeners (surely the most pathetic gardeners in the whole of London, given the sorry state of the square) to water the poor tree, on the extremely rare occasion that I actually saw a hosepipe on. Oh, he said, he'd forgotten about that one. Yes, quite, and now it is dead.
A.L. Kennedy said it much better than I can on Radio 4 this morning. Start in at 55 minutes for someone who truly understands the horror of August in London: ~ http://bbc.in/1NF7H5R
Despite the ghastly heat of summer, it feels faintly autumnal on Russell Square, but that's only because there are so many dead leaves on the ground. It doesn't rain in London, whatever the tourists might tell you. Occasionally we get a bit of armpit sweat drizzling sickly out the sky and there's quite a lot of sticky grey cloud hanging about but mostly it's dry dry dry. The one day it rained this summer - that'll be the day that everyone remembers, convinced it rained every day. It doesn't. I live here. I know. There's a tiny new cherry blossom tree that flowered beautifully in the spring that is sadly dead, still hanging onto its dried up leaves as if for comfort. I told one of the gardeners (surely the most pathetic gardeners in the whole of London, given the sorry state of the square) to water the poor tree, on the extremely rare occasion that I actually saw a hosepipe on. Oh, he said, he'd forgotten about that one. Yes, quite, and now it is dead.
A.L. Kennedy said it much better than I can on Radio 4 this morning. Start in at 55 minutes for someone who truly understands the horror of August in London: ~ http://bbc.in/1NF7H5R
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